North Korea, UN Command to Meet Again Friday

The U.S.-led United Nations Command will hold a third round of talks with North Korean military officials about the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship that has been blamed on Pyongyang.

The Command says the colonel-level talks, which will take place Friday at the border village of Panmunjom, will focus whether the two sides should form a joint group to assess the evidence involved in the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan, which left 46 South Korean sailors dead.

An international team of investigators says a North Korean torpedo downed the Cheonan, a charge denied by Pyongyang.

At the last meeting held in Panmunjom last week, the North renewed an earlier request to examine the wreckage of the Cheonan. But the U.S.-led U.N. Command said it demanded the regime admit responsibility for the sinking.

It also told the North the attack was a violation of the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953. The U.N. Command enforces the armistice.